Carpets are tufted, woven, knotted and needled from manmade fibres, wool, haircord, silk and cotton. Tufting is the dominant production technique for factory-manufactured carpets, the use of manmade fibres and in particular polyamide (mainly polyamide 6.6) filament yarns and staple fibre yarns predominating. The factory-finished tufting carpet, which can be used as both a floor covering and a wall covering, offers not only comfort but also considerable advantages in terms of insulation, and thereby aids the heat balance in buildings.
The tufting carpet structures usual today predominantly consist of three components, namely the tufting base, the pile material and the carpet back. Various materials, which differ basically from one another in chemical terms and cannot be regenerated with one another, e.g. polypropylene, polyamide, polyurethane, polyvinyl chloride and jute, are used for these components. Combinations of polypropylene as base woven fabric, polyamide as pile material and polyurethane as back coating predominate.
The tufting base is a woven fabric which predominantly comprises polypropylene or a spun non-woven made from polyester or polypropylene. Jute woven fabrics are used more rarely.
The pile material consists predominantly of staple fibres made from polyamide, secondarily spun and then subsequently tufted, or of polyamides which have been extruded in a single- or multi-step process to produce a continuous filament yarn, stretched and texturized (BCF yarns=bulked continuous filament).
The carpet back performs several functions. A rubber or SB latex pre-coating is added to the tufted carpet to secure the tufting loops. In the case of tufting carpets for objects, a second back predominantly comprising polyester woven fabric is frequently glued on and the carpet laid thus. For use in the residential sector, partly filled foams based on latex or polyurethane are usually added to increase comfort.
The tufting carpets structured in the manner described pose a major refuse- or waste-disposal problem once their use is finished, as they occur in large quantities (large volume and large weight) and practically disintegrate not at all, or only very slowly. Separation into the individual components and re-use of these components is also extremely difficult or virtually impossible and has thus been disregarded to date already on purely economic grounds. In view of the ever-increasing waste-disposal problems, there is thus a pressing need for tufting carpets which can be easily disposed of or re-utilized after use.